How to Make Money With Facebook Landing Pages

For businesses, Facebook is only as good as it is valuable. Value can be defined in a number of different ways, but this post focuses on conversions and the bottom line: money.

Calculating how much money they make from their Facebook Pages is difficult for businesses of all sizes. But instead of counting Facebook Likes and accepting that as your sole Facebook ROI metric — or being included in the 53% of social media marketers who don’t measure their success at all (according to Awareness, Inc.) — let’s discuss a better measurement tool: landing pages.

Traditionally, landing pages are website opt-in pages that are used to capture visitor information and improve lead generation results. By creating a landing page that lives as an app (previously referred to as “tab”) within your business’s Facebook Page, your brand’s Page is transformed into a monetizable online hub, collecting valuable information that also helps you stay connected with fans even outside of Facebook.

There a few common myths when it comes to landing pages:

1. Landing pages are for websites only.

2. Landing pages are expensive to create.

3. Only large companies use landing pages.

And all three are just that — myths! In today’s post, I’m going to address why these myths persist, include information about the benefits of creating landing pages, and outline the design components that make landing pages most effective.

Note: Before we get into how to create a landing page within Facebook, one thing to keep in mind is that there is no way to “default” your users to a landing page. When Facebook changed their layout to Timeline they removed default landing pages. Now anyone who visits a Facebook Page can only view an app (or a landing page) from a provided link on the Timeline.

Okay, let’s get started!

Creating Landing Pages within Facebook Can Increase Profits

If you tuned into Amy’s most recent webinar on email-list building, you’ll remember she mentioned that keeping your fans inside of facebook when asking for their names and email addresses may help your conversions. She’s right, but not every brand is taking advantage of this.

According to the Hubspot article “How to Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Email List,” only 10 percent of brands currently use an email opt-in form on their Facebook Page. Those businesses have a leg up on their competition because they’re making it easier for their Facebook fans to become email subscribers. And as most marketers know, having a strong email list is a foot in the door to better lead generation and increased sales.

There are so many statistics on lead generation and social media that it’s sometimes difficult to weed through them to find the numbers that are most important. To shed light on how social media and landing pages can complement one another, check out these eye-opening stats:

Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)

Companies that acquired customers from Facebook: B2C is 77% and B2B is 43%. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)

Companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7x more leads than those with fewer than 10. (HubSpot)

Although currently there’s little information available about whether landing pages created within Facebook are more effective than landing pages for websites, we do know recent studies prove that people more freely reveal personal information about themselves when on Facebook. In one study by Amanda Nosko for the Department of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University, she found that 53 percent of users disclose their email addresses on Facebook.

How to Create Landing Pages within Facebook

To create a landing page within Facebook, a popular option that saves a lot of time and stress is to use a third-party application design tool. Yes, it is possible to design a landing page within Facebook without enlisting a third-party app company, but there are a few drawbacks.

To design your own landing page within Facebook you need coding skills,Facebook platform- compliant servers to store data like email addresses that your landing page will collect and, most of all, time. The simpler option: use a third-party app design tool where all the heavy lifting is done for you.

Another reason many people decide to use a third-party app company to design their Facebook landing pages is because it’s more cost effective. There are some app design tool companies that provide a free plan so it’s possible that it won’t cost you anything to design and host a Facebook landing page.

A list of your offerings. The body of your landing page should include an easy-to-read list of what your business is offering in response to an email opt-in.

Relevant images. Whatever image(s) you choose to use on your Facebook landing page make sure it’s relevant and high quality.

Other optional, but helpful, landing pages design components include: testimonials, a video, a slideshow (great if you have an eBook and you want to feature a few pages) and out-linking social media icons.

The rule of thumb when designing any kind of landing page, whether for Facebook or your website, is to keep it simple, professional looking and easy to digest and navigate for the user. For reference, here are two great examples of landing pages used within Facebook.

The first example is from Amy Porterfield’s Facebook Page. Her landing page design is clean, presents an enticing offerings list, and even includes a drop-down menu so that she can easily gather detailed user information.

The second is example from Jon Loomer’s Facebook Page. This is an example of a more complex, content-heavy Facebook landing page. It includes a lot of audio elements and a box where users can submit their comments.

Conclusion

Whether you’re small or large, service-based or product-based, landing pages are valuable for all types of businesses. When used within the Facebook ecosystem, landing pages complement social media and email marketing efforts, as well as improve the value of a brand’s Facebook Page.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comment box below!

About Jim Belosic

Jim Belosic is the CEO of ShortStack, a self-service web app design tool that allows users to create custom Facebook apps for Facebook and external websites. Its interface provides small businesses, individuals, graphic designers, agencies, and corporations with the tools needed to build mini-websites within their Facebook pages that help drive user interaction and increase fan page likes.

http://twitter.com/Appska Appska

Agreed, Landing pages could work best inside a social based eco-system !

http://successwithsocialmediaonline.com/facebook/ Jacob

A well-designed landing page must have a essential components. this is great info,for a starter like me. nice.

dawnmarrs

Thanks for putting this together Jim (and thanks Amy for the ongoing awesome content)! It really helps to have all tools and tips in one place… Particularly the “how-to” portion… Great article!

Nice post. Facebook is great way to reach target audience with FB since there are millions of people using it every day. Other ways i make money online i found in this free ebook: http://at5.us/freebook

The combination of strategic targeting and visually stimulating ads usually works best in terms of succeeding over Facebook marketing. Kudos to a very informative article Jim! Just want to share with you this case study on how 2 guys launched a million dollar campaign on Facebook in 7 months by targeting the right audience. Here’s the link for reference: http://adfilic.com/socialsecret

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About Amy

Amy is a social media strategist and co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies. She helps entrepreneurs across industries establish strategies to maximize the power of social media and increase the success of their online marketing efforts.